Augmented Reality is Coming to Reels Ads and Facebook Stories Meta announced this afternoon IAB’s NewFronts as part of its offer for advertisers. The update allows brands like Sephora and Tiffany & Co. and others by offering more immersive experiences and AR filters when marketing to a Meta audience, including younger Gen Z users. The company said it’s also rolling out other optimizations and improvements to Reels Ads and popular brands will now be able to work with third-party measurement partners for their Reels Ads campaigns.
Meta’s investment in augmented reality (AR) advertising could put the company in a better position to compete with Snap for marketers’ ad dollars, as they look for ways to reach the younger Gen Z demographic. Earlier this week on NewFronts, Snap introduced its own batch of new advertising products, including those for Stories and a TikTik clone known as Spotlight. But the most striking news was its testing of sponsored links in its chatbot AI feature, My AI.
In terms of augmented reality, Snap has long offered ways for brands to reach their users through the format, including through a variety of AR commerce features and the popular Snapchat Lenses, for example. They also work with brands that want to leverage their AR technology on their websites and apps through their AR Enterprise Services division.
Prior to today’s announcement, Meta ran AR ads in its Facebook Feed, Instagram Feed, and Instagram Stories. According to its data, these ads resulted in higher ad recall in the 18-24 age group 87% of the time, outperforming non-AR-enabled ads.
Now, these ads can be shown in other prominent places across the Meta platform, including Facebook, Instagram Reels, and Facebook Stories.
Sephora was able to test AR Reels ahead of this launch, displaying an ad that had users press their thumb on the screen to create an “aura vibe” filter to help them choose the most suitable fragrance and make a purchase. The company said more than half of the ad audience were Gen Z users.
She also created Tiffany & Co. also an augmented reality ad that allows users to immerse themselves in their flagship store on 5th Avenue, “The Landmark”, and browse jewelry.
In addition to expanding on augmented reality ads, Meta announced features to make Ad Reels more interactive, including testing a larger call-to-action button with additional advertiser information on Facebook Ads and Instagram Reels. The button includes an ad thumbnail, a title, and additional business details, such as a website URL, to help direct interested customers to click.
Image credits: meta
The company will now also allow Facebook users to pause a video ad and preview where the link will take them, which could lead to higher click rates for Reels ads.
For shopping ads, Reels will serve multi-destination new product ads which means that instead of an ad just pointing to a single retailer’s website or product page, they can scroll through multiple product images in a carousel without leaving the reel they’re viewing.
Image credits: meta
Meta also said marketers can now work with select third-party measurement companies on Reels Ads campaigns, including Double Verify, IAS, and MOAT. The company said these companies are helping it test and release a Reels viewability reporting option that will later be rolled out to advertisers when testing is complete.
The company also took a moment while outlining its investment in artificial intelligence, noting that it’s using the technology to improve ad ranking by recognizing which ads work and which don’t, and better predict which ads will be more relevant.
“It also increases efficiency for a range of advertising products, eliminating many of the manual and tedious steps of ad creation,” said Nicola Mendelssohn, Head of Meta’s Global Business Group. She added that Meta investments are “already paying off, especially with Meta Advantage, which is our brand name for our AI product portfolio. Meta Advantage leverages machine learning and artificial intelligence to help advertisers test and learn but also to quickly realize their campaigns and help them acquire and grow their customer base.” .
Mendelsohn said the majority of Meta advertisers are already using an AI product, Advantage + Shopping, that launched just this past August. Previously, she explained, advertisers had to manually set up a campaign to send a mix of targeting, creatives, and text placements, which was time-consuming. Now, advertisers can use Advantage + Shopping campaigns to execute millions of iterations of targeting performance scenarios in milliseconds, allowing them to choose the best combination, in order to send the best ad to the right person at the right time – all thanks to AI.
“This is just the beginning of how AI can create better connections with people and generate more growth for your business. We will have more and more product updates and announcements about AI in the next few weeks,” she said.
The company also talked about its AI agenda during its first-quarter earnings, also noting how AI improved the monetization efficiency of Reels, which increased by over 30% on Instagram and over 40% on Facebook on a quarterly basis. In addition, CEO Mark Zuckerberg also shared that Meta’s future plans for AI include “chat experiences in WhatsApp and Messenger, visual creation tools for Facebook and Instagram posts and ads, and over time video and multimedia experiences.”